Monk

We Say...

Review by Charles Farrell

If ever there was a jazz composer whose work wouldn’t seem guitar-friendly, it is Thelonious Monk. Piano players can tap into the basic percussiveness of his pieces and horn players can dig aggressively into his blowing tunes or rhapsodize over the ballads. But a guitarist, especially one whose style owes much to the traditional masters like Jim Hall and Joe Pass, might seem too timid.

Peter Bernstein has figured out a way to take on Monk without sacrificing any of the guitar’s natural attributes. He knows Monk’s material backward and forward, but eschews the music’s quirkiness in favor of its architecture. The key here is using musical intelligence. In this pursuit, he is ably assisted by bass player Doug Weiss and the understandably ubiquitous drummer Bill Stewart. By collectively reducing the flamboyant elements of Monk’s music, they get to the spare beauty found beneath the surface.

There’s a calm to the opening “Let’s Cool One” that allows Bernstein to slowly build his solo, a blend of articulate single note runs and strategically based chordal references. Weiss’s solo follows, and then Bernstein trades fours with Stewart. The drummer is able to play with great force at minimal volume. The exquisite ballad “Pannonica” is a crystalline performance, Bernstein adding brief asides as he states the melody. Monk’s own approach to his up-tempo tunes was to gallop through them. Bernstein is more pristine: “Work” is very contained, with the guitarist letting the drums do the galloping. Weiss walks strongly to set up “In Walked Bud.” The guitar plays vaguely elliptical lines, roughly the equivalent to dropping consonants, as Stewart aggressively fills in the blanks. “Well You Needn’t” offers a nice twist: it’s played in a subtle and swinging 5/4. On “Bemsha Swing,” the guitar returns to the effective device of echoing the single note melody with chordal references. “Ruby, My Dear” is one of my favorite Monk compositions, and it may well be one of Peter Bernstein’s too. He plays it solo, love and care for this great tune emanating from every note. “Blues 5 Spot” is a first rate take on the blues, the tempo just right, the guys digging in hard, Weiss playing a tough little solo, Stewart shaking things up during the fours, after which the trio slides back together like a well-oiled machine.